Aeroflot Flight 593
| Occurrence | |
|---|---|
| Date | March 23 1994 |
| Summary | Pilot error |
| Site | Siberia, Russia |
| Aircraft type | Airbus A310-304 |
| Operator | Aeroflot |
| Registration | F-OGQS |
| Passengers | 63 |
| Crew | 12 |
| Fatalities | 75 |
| Injuries | 0 |
| Survivors | 0 |
Aeroflot Flight 593 refers to an airline crash on March 23 1994 in which an Aeroflot Airbus A310-300, flying from Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO) to Hong Kong's former Hong Kong international airport (Kai Tak Airport), crashed into a hillside in Siberia. All 75 passengers and crew were killed. The flight cockpit voice recorder revealed that the pilot's 15-year-old son had been at the controls at the time.
After analysing the flight data recorder, investigators found that the plane, which had been flying normally, suddenly banked right, ascended rapidly, then went into a rapid descent. However, when the flight voice recorder was recovered it was found that the pilot's 15-year-old son, Eldar Kudrinsky, had been at the controls when the incident occurred. Kudrinsky in fact unknowingly activated a feature of the A310's autopilot that most pilots at the time were unfamiliar with.
The pilot, Yaroslav Kudrinsky, was taking his two children on their first international flight and they were brought to the cockpit while he was on duty. With the autopilot active, Kudrinksy offered to let them sit at the controls. First his daughter took the pilot's seat. Kudrinsky adjusted the autopilot's heading to give her the impression that she was turning the plane, though she actually had no control of the plane. Next, his son Eldar took the pilot's seat. Unlike his sister, Eldar actually applied force to turning the steering column. After applying force contradicting the autopilot for 30 seconds, this partially disconnected the autopilot. The system switched the plane's ailerons to manual control, while maintaining control over the other flight systems. The plane did not signal a warning that this had occurred; an indicator light did come on, but it apparently went unnoticed by the pilots who had previously piloted planes with an audible warning signal for such a case. The first to notice a problem was Eldar who noticed that the plane was banking right. Shortly after, the flight path indicator changed to show they were in a holding pattern (when a plane circles an airport until it is clear to land). This confused the pilots for nine seconds.
After this, the plane banked past a 45-degree angle (steeper than it was designed for). This increased the G-force on the pilots and crew, making their bodies feel twice as heavy as usual, and making it impossible for the Captain to replace his son at the controls. The remaining functions of the autopilot tried to correct this by putting the plane in an almost vertical ascent, nearly stalling the plane. The co-pilot and Eldar managed to get the plane into a nosedive, which reduced the G-force on the pilots and enabled Yaroslav to take the controls. Though he and his co-pilot did bring the plane back to flight level, their low altitude caused them to crash.
A recovery procedure that the pilots were not made aware of on the A310 was that, had their hands been taken off the controls during the stall, the plane would have taken its own corrective action to recover. This was demonstrated on an episode of the TV series Mayday which featured this crash.
This incident is very similar to that in the novel Airframe; both have non-certified family members at the controls and both would have been avoided had auto-pilot been allowed to take over.
The Flight Number
Although it is common airline practice to retire the flight numbers of flights involved in fatal accidents, Aeroflot continued to use flight number 593 on its Moscow - Hong Kong service until early 2006. The service has been expanded from twice weekly to five times a week. The additional flights are assigned flight number 595. The two original flights now fly with the flight number 591. Both flights are now, however, being operated with Boeing 767-300 aircraft.